The author, a travel writer by trade, lists what he calls “beloved places I’m supposed to like, but don’t.” I agree with him about New Zealand, although on different grounds. I certainly agree with him about Colorado, which he calls a midwestern state posing as a western one (or, as one review paraphrased it, “Kansas with hills”). And he didn’t even get into all the reasons why Boulder in particular isn’t great. So, why does he put Austin on his list of beloved places that, by him, aren’t? Why does he say that, if Austin weren’t surrounded by Texas, it would be Sacramento. I kind of like Sacramento, but other than the fact that it is also a state capital and sited on riverbanks, where is the resemblance between it and Austin? Just wondering. (On the other hand, I wonder whether bus-riders in Sacramento are barred from waiting near the governor’s mansion and are scheduled to be barred from waiting in front of the capitol.) The book is Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, by Chuck Thompson. It’s entertaining for lots of reasons. I totally agree about bed-and-breakfast outfits, but I can’t quite understand his animus against Lonely Planet books. Don’t read the book for more opinions on Austin; the author says he doesn’t like it and that’s it.

It is once again time for NaNoWriMo. Every November people join together to face the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It’s all about silencing your inner editor and just breaking down the creative walls even if you just spew random crap. Check out the details at the link above and sign up. Thee will be a midnight write-in at The Dragon’s Lair tonight for people participating so if you sign up and want to go start writing with other Austin NaNo’ers head on down.

You can have previous ideas or outlines but you can’t actually have anything written before midnight tonight so no continuing or finishing up old projects (well not officially with NaNo anyway, but no one says you can’t use November to kick yourself into gear finishing up some project).

I borrowed Literary Austin (edited by Don Graham) expecting to dip into the interesting parts and skip the rest but I read it all. Even though there are over 450 pages, there’s plenty of white space in this sturdily bound and heavy book. Chronologically ordered, this collection devotes the expected amount of space or perhaps even more to the usual: O. Henry, The Bedichek-Dobie-Webb triumvirate, Billy Lee Brammer and company, and the TexMo people, but there are a few surprises, and these are what make this book worth reading. It’s carelessly edited (Governor “Clemens,” “Hayes” County, every possible variation on Scholz Garten, and more), and it’s generally a collection of light journalism and light-hearted gossip. I was interested to learn that, at least at one time, the Austin parks department was keeping the head of Stephen F. Austin in storage. Stephen F. Austin’s feet remained in place long after the rest of the statue depicting him disappeared, there at the little triangle favored as a lounging spot by those with no better way to pass their time, just off South Congress by the county precinct offices. I loved Robert Draper’s brief account of working for Jeff Nightbyrd of Austin Sun and powdered-urine fame. A great feature of this book is the brief annotated bibliography of works not excerpted in the compilation. Of course, it includes brief descriptions of some of the works of Shelby Hearon and Sarah Bird, but it also gathers in one place information about quite a number of the many mysteries set in Austin. This book is already at some library branches and is on order at others.

That’s the connection between a book by a used-to-be Austinite and Austin. I recognized the author’s name, so I borrowed the book from the library. The name is Adrienne Martini, and the book is Hillbilly Gothic, subtitled “A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood.” The name was familiar from the Chron and also from Austin Mama, to which Adrienne Martini contributes an essay sort of monthly. The events recounted in the book, which is in great part a memoir of post-partum depression, take place in Knoxville. As to Austin, the author thanks her old editor, Robert Faires; the dust jacket carries a blurb by Marion Winik, another former Austinite and Chron contributor; and we learn that the author lived behind a Walgreens and that Austin is hot, hot, hot three seasons of the four. I don’t think she loved Austin, describing it in the book as “being strip-mined by Hollywood and the recording industry for all of its cool, indy cred” and saying that summer “spanned from April to October” and writing of the “oppressive sunlight.” Why did she decamp? “After five years there, I was ready to leave. Austin is a great place to live, as long as you don’t mind the constant heat and oppressive hipsters. But it was time for me to go. I’ve never been a good fake Texan and am completely unable to embrace the expensiveness that is their birthright. There’s too much sun and too much sky and too much space.” Adrienne Martini now resides in Oneonta, New York, reportedly the birthplace of Jerry Jeff Walker. She has her own blog.

Austin author Lawrence Wright won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction with his book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright apparently also plays in a local blues band called WhoDo. He has a copy of an Austin-American Statesman article about the book from August 6th, 2006 on his web site.

Congratulations also to fellow Texan, Ornette Coleman (born in Ft. Worth), who won for his recent release, Sound Grammar.

Around the Bloc, the choice for the 2007 Mayor’s Book Club, is to be found at every branch of the library. It takes no time at all to read. The connection with Austin seems a bit tenuous. Stephanie Elizondo Griest, the author, attended UT, lived in a co-op, and refers in passing to such local landmarks as the Drag, Eeyore’s, Cap’n Quack’s, the old High Times coffee place, Barton Springs, and a very few more. She was employed for a while with the Austin bureau of AP. In its paperbound edition, this book’s list price is $13.95 for 399 pages. I enjoyed the account of the author’s residences in Moscow and Beijing and her visit to Cuba. She associates with other young adults and pays the right amount of attention to food, which is a lot! This is an enjoyable travel account. The author wonders why she invested so much time in learning Russian and Mandarin while ignoring the Spanish that surrounded her while she was growing up. Big chunks of this book make for entertaining readling aloud. We all wanted to know, what’s with orange polka-dot teapots in Russia? She mentions several, and nearly every domestic establishment seems to include one. Google doesn’t help. The author’s schedule will bring her to Austin for several events, beginning on April 17 and ending on April 21.

I went and checked out Neal Pollack at Bookpeople tonight. He read a few excerpts from the book, Alternadad, a memoir set mostly during the time that he lived in Austin. He read a bit from his blog at the end. He followed the reading with a Q&A which included a question about his reaction to the David Brooks column that slammed his book without actually mentioning his name. Nice.

He’ll be appearing two more times: once at the Rock n Romp at Mohawk on Sunday and once during his SXSW panel on Monday.

I recognized Amanda Marcotte, who made the news recently as the blogger who was hounded out of the John Edwards campaign, in the audience along with Michael Barnett who used to write for Austinist and, apparently, several of Pollack’s old neighbors. From one Alternadad to another, I gave him a copy of my band’s CD. I picked up a copy of the book and he inscribed it “For Tim, there’s nothing in here you don’t already know. Rock On.”

Rock on, indeed. He’s here until Monday. Check him out if you have the chance.

If your tastes run more to Flora-rama than Obama-rama, you should check out former Austinite and garden writer Amy Stewart. She appears at Book People tonight to give a reading from her latest book, the acclaimed behind-the-scenes look at the flower industry Flower Confidential. Flower Confidential, Ms. Stewart’s third book, debuted #31 on the New York Times bestseller list.

From the blurb:

“What has been gained–and what has been lost–in tinkering with Mother Nature? Should we care that roses have lost their scent? Or that most flowers are sprayed with pesticides? In a global marketplace, is there such a thing as a socially responsible flower? At every turn, Stewart discovers a fascinating intersection of nature and technology, of sentiment and commerce. You’ll never look at a cut flower the same way again.”

Date: Friday, February 23, 2007 07:00 PM
Book People
603 N. Lamar (Map: 6th and Lamar)
AUSTIN TX 78703

Former Austinite Neal Pollack posted on his blog yesterday that he’ll be at Bookpeople to promote his new book, Alternadad, on Thursday, March 8. Mark your calendars.

He points out that 3/4 of the book takes place in Austin though he moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago. He also announced that he’ll be at SXSW Interactive this year, but doesn’t have schedule information yet. According to the SXSW Interactive site, he’s scheduled for Monday, March 12 in the afternoon.

Even the river is the Alameda. Austin was once called Waterloo, but that’s as close as the nomenclature comes to congruency. In this very low-key novel set in an Austin analogue, sometimes it seems as though all the energy has been expended on devising names. There are glancing looks at at true-to-life people and scenes, and their intersections.

Among the characters are politicos, both elected and lobbying, of at least three eras. Austin’s history of racial segregation is not overlooked (the veracious examination of the history of library service is just one example). Standing in for the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker are Austin equivalents: former bandmembers now with day-jobs, mostly in the bowels of state government, plus a lawyer, a muffin-shop magnate, a construction contractor, and a reporter for the local daily as well as a reporter for the local weekly.

I look forward to the next novel by Karen Olsson, and I hope there’ll be one. There are sections here and there that cry out for reading aloud. My favorite is the bit involving an old-style Austin landlady of a certain age and the monthly obligation to accompany her to dinner at one of the oldest and worst Tex-Mex restaurants in town. We all guess the same one. Although the tone of Waterloo is on the melancholy side, there’s plenty of humor. I hope that somebody has optioned this for a movie and that the movie will be made.

The physical paperbound volume is beautiful, in proportions, typefaces, whitespace, and paper. Waterloo has garnered excellent reviews, including from national publications, but I find that its chief interest for me lies in the Austinesque and that otherwise it’s a somewhat generic effort, a not-quite-coming-of-age narrative whose characters take slight steps in the direction of adopting conventional notions of maturity and may or may not in the future think better of it. Waterloo is a light romance, and “Waterloo,” the town, is the true object of desire.